Tenants have a few options when landlords won’t fix problems

Q: I’m a tenant and a weekly reader of your column. I’ve noticed that you seldom answer questions from tenants but I’m hoping you’ll answer this one. My family and I rent a home in Suisun City. It’s a very old house downtown. Over the past several months a number of problems have cropped up in the house that the landlord won’t fix. Or at least hasn’t fixed despite our numerous requests. As an example, the roof in my daughter’s bedroom leaks. For tunately, it hasn’t rained too much, but still it leaks. The linoleum in the kitchen is in really bad shape and impossi ble to really get clean. There are several electrical sockets around the house that just don’t work. My son has no electricity in his bedroom. I’ve threatened the landlord that we are going to withhold the rent and he says if we do he’ll evict us. We are in the middle of a three-year lease. What should we do and how do we do it? Thanks.

A: To be honest, the reason I seldom answer questions from tenants is that I seldom get them. It seems that homeowners are much more likely to write in. So I’m happy to field your question.

Tenants have a number of remedies available to them when dealing with landlords who won’t fix problems in the home or apartment.

All of these remedies presume the tenant has given the landlord ample notice of the problem and a reasonable time to fix the problem.

The least serious is simply to fix it yourself and bill the landlord for the cost of the repair. In practice, you’d deduct the amount of the repair from your

For example, if the bathroom sink was clogged, you’d inform the landlord. If he doesn’t get it fixed within, say, five days, you could call a plumber, pay the bill and deduct the amount you paid

This works for problems that don’t technically affect the hab- isn’t much more than a month’s rent or so and that you can afford to pay the bill in the first place.

More serious problems, which translated means more expensive problems, can also allow the tenant to simply break the lease and move on the theory that the landlord has failed to live up to his contractual commitments.

However, withholding rent until a problem is fixed has got to be the most misunderstood remedy in the tenant’s arsenal and frequently gets tenants in trouble with the courts.

Withholding rent is only available when habitability issues are at stake. In this context, the word habitability has a legal meaning. It doesn’t mean that the paint is chipping or the microwave doesn’t work.

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